Our family trip through Nepal, Australia and Thailand in 2013

Swimming here sucks

The beach life here in Northern Queensland can be quite frustrating. Most of the beaches up here are beautiful, often palm-lined, and can stretch for many miles … unfortunately, taking long walks is about all you can do on them.

It’s especially frustrating for the kids, who would love to go swimming. Further south (e.g. along the Sunshine Coast), the water was too cold … up here in the north, marine stingers might be waiting for you in the surf. The stingers are small jellyfish that drag about 3 meter long tentacles behind them, and apparently their poison is some of the deadliest (and maybe THE most painful) known to man.

They are found in the waters here until the month of May and “should” be gone by now, but who knows. The lifeguards tell us to assume that they are still there. Some of the locals think it’s too dangerous to go into the water without a protective suit … others think it’s perfectly safe. And the only ones you actually see swimming are very few (and very daring) European tourists. Just two weeks ago the papers here wrote about a family with two small children on a long term vacation, caravaning around Australia (sounds a bit like us). The parents were out swimming (not 50 meters away from the beach) and were killed by marine stingers while their kids were watching from the beach. To be fair, this happened in North-West Australia … but still sounds a bit disconcerting.

Oh yes … I almost forgot … if the jellyfish don’t get you, the saltwater crocodiles or rip tides might. There is a good reason every hotel or camp site here has a pool.